Tag: cover conversion

The internet is covered with articles on every possible topic regarding independent publishing. This includes ‘author tools’, ‘marketing tools’ – in fact any kind of tool! We have apps, programs and excellent websites that expertly promote authors and their books (like www.indieauthornews.com).

Authors can now choose their preferred services for cover design, formatting, editing and publication platforms. Indie publishing is an exciting and thriving industry and it will keep growing.

And with all the available tools and articles, I thought it interesting – and different – to ask a few of my clients “how do you achieve your writing success?” and to then share their answers in this article. I’ve been working with these authors and their books’ covers for quite some time now, and have witnessed their growth (and sales) with excitement, and yes, pride!

There is definitely inspiration – and a lesson or two – to be learnt from their contributions and careers so far!

HOW DO YOU ACHIEVE YOUR WRITING SUCCESS?

Becky Wicks

I drink a lot of coffee, which keep my eyeballs wide and my brain ticking with randomness, almost all of which then gets typed by fervent fingers! Seriously though, achieving success is all about discipline, ignoring any negativity that threatens to stop me in my tracks and just working damn hard! Most indie writers will tell you that publishing a book is half about the writing and half about the marketing now. When I was promoting my first romance ‘Before He Was Famous’ I’d spend about 16 hours a day staring into my laptop, wondering how the hell I was going to sell anything without HarperCollins behind me (they published my three travel memoirs but with novels I decided to go solo).

It was a lot of work to make a million connections, to reach out to bloggers and reviewers, to learn different programs and also to learn from my mistakes! Success comes after a whole bunch of mistakes I think – but you just have to keep on going. I feel like I’ve achieved more success with my newest book, ‘The Day Of The Wave’ because it’s based on a real-life event – the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. I had to do so much research to get my facts straight and to ensure I did not only do my characters justice, but the actual survivors and all those who perished too. To know people like it (so far the reviews are good!) means so much because it means I am slowly but surely mastering my craft and learning what works as I go. What more can we do but keep scribbling, keep learning and keep on drinking coffee?!

I think achieving writing success requires, or at least begins, with two things: the ability to dream up a story and the ability to convey that story in writing. The first is mostly instinctual. Dreamers aren’t made, they are born. I was born a bit introverted, and as such, I often found myself alone with just my thoughts and imagination. I exercised this imagination constantly, like a hard core weightlifter, only with my crazy brain instead of muscles.

The ability to convey your imagination into writing is part technical and part instinctual. I think writing fiction is a lot like writing music. You have to be able to hear it in your head and detect discordance. Some writers have chosen to become authors and worked toward that end by getting a literary degree. I learned how to wing it.

As a soldier, one of my sergeants would come to me and tell me to give a class on something. I would say something to the effect of: “I have no idea how to do that.” He or she would respond (the good ones anyway): “There’s a stack of field manuals. You have four days to become a subject matter expert.” This is where I learned how to look up anything I don’t know, and when it came to writing and grammar, that intellectual void was vast.

Ultimately, I was able to write some stories that many people have enjoyed, and entertaining a reader is how I define success—that and being able to pay my bills.

Writing Success to me is finishing a book, having an actual story that came from your imagination, whether you publish it, whether it becomes a bestseller, or whether you make any money from the book. Lots of people say they want to write a book, but does everyone go ahead and start it? Or finish it? To anyone who completes a book, that’s success to me.

In my writing career I’ve written four full-length novels and a number of novellas. My first novel ‘The Dream Jumper’s Promise’ has been downloaded over 60,000 times and when I published the novel, I hoped that a hundred people would read it. That book has 256 reviews on Amazon so I know for sure that they read my book. 93% gave it a 4 and 5 star review.

For me, the success of my career has been a combination of writing every day, doing writing workshops, taking my career seriously as an Independent Author, writing true to my heart (not writing what’s necessarily popular to cash in on a trend, but what I want to write,) and trying to improve my product.

One of the most important aspects to Indie Authorship is to never give up, keep writing, and improving. There is no one there to support you if you publish your own work so you need to be your own cheerleader, but don’t give up improving if this is what you love. It might be a cliché but it’s a great cliché.